


Unfinished Business

by AlbaLark



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Gift Fic, Prompt Fic, Snupin Fantasy Fest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-06
Updated: 2012-03-06
Packaged: 2017-11-01 13:41:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/357438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlbaLark/pseuds/AlbaLark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>George wants to license one of Severus's potions, Remus comes along for moral support.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unfinished Business

**Author's Note:**

> Rating: PG (implications of once and future slash)
> 
> Warnings: Post-DH; Canon compliant until the point at which Jo lost her mind; teh angst
> 
> Prompt:dd40: George, Innovation, Acceptance
> 
> Author's notes: Er, this was *supposed* to be a drabble, but it, um, got away from me. Since it doesn't come anywhere close to the word limit (about 3600, but who's counting), I'm not going to officially claim the prompt, leaving it available for someone who isn't constitutionally incapable of concision :-p . Instead, think of it as a lagniappe; a gift for a community which has been very kind to me in my newbie-ness. I hope you all enjoy it.
> 
> Disclaimers, addenda, codicils and blather: Of course they're not mine. If they were, they'd be sitting on a beach in Tahiti right now drinking fruity umbrella drinks and oogling the cabana boys. This is absolutely, positively, completely unBeta-ed. Therefore, any grammatical errors, punctuation mishaps, misspellings, run-on sentences, butchery of the Welsh Language and and anything else which offends anyone's sensibilities are strictly mine own. I will worship at the shrine of anyone who'd volunteer to Beta for me if I should be temporarily insane enough to do this again XD.

One wary, baleful eye peeked from the barely opened door.

“What do you want?”

The voice was scratchy, as if it had gone completely unused in the month since its owner had been released from St. Mungo’s. Remus and George glanced at one another, then George stepped forward.

“I’d like to license a potion you created, sir. We’ve a Defense range we have been selling to the Department of Mysteries, and I believe that your _Acies Opacus_ would be exactly what we have been looking for.”

“Lupin!” Raspy though it may be, the voice had lost none of its acerbity. “Did you put him up to this?”

“No, Severus,” answered Remus, looking him directly in the eye. “When George told me that he was thinking about commissioning you to create such a potion, I told him there was no need, as you had already made one.”

“Commissioning me?” Nor had Snape lost his ability to convey deep suspicion, but Remus thought he heard a tiny waver of vulnerability threaded through the doubt.

“Yes, sir, and I’m still interested in doing that for other things we need.” George took a scroll from his robes and extended it toward the man behind the door. “Here’s a contract for the _Acies Opacus_ , and you’ll see the terms include an up-front licensing fee and a percentage of the profits. If it pleases the Ministry half as well as I think it will, it’ll make us both a tidy sum. Look it over. If you’re interested, come by my flat over the shop tomorrow evening at 6:30. We’ll sign it, and I’ll write you a cheque on the spot.”

A thin, nearly spectral, hand reached through the crack in the door and grasped the scroll as if uncertain it was solid. “I -, I’ll think about it, Mr. Weasley. Good day to you. And you, Lupin.” With that, the hand and the eye withdrew, and the door closed softly but firmly.

“Do you think he’ll actually come?” George looked as if he were afraid to hope, but was unable to help himself.

“Perhaps,” Remus said, daring to feel optimistic. “In truth, I never expected to get this far.”

The pair walked to the end of the seemingly deserted, grungy street and around the corner to a mews behind a pub, where they were reasonably sheltered from Muggle interest.

“Why’s that?”

“Other than the St. Mungo’s staff, we are the first to set eyes on him since he woke from his coma. He has not only steadfastly refused all visitors, but even owls return with their letters and parcels untouched. It seems,” said Remus softly, “as if he would rather we forget he survived. Why he made an exception for you, I’m not sure.”

“Us,” said George with a note of surprise in his voice, “He made an exception for _us_.”

Remus merely smiled sadly, as he turned in place to disapparate. His had been among the first of the visitations and letters to be refused.

 

~ooo0000ooo~

 

When the knock came at precisely 6:30 the following evening, they were all sitting in the kitchen, scarcely daring to breathe. George wiped his hands on his robes as he rose from the table, and motioned for Remus to follow.

There came another knock - a bit more insistent this time - just as George put his hand on the knob. Gingerly, almost as if he feared what might be on the other side, George opened his door to . . . nothing.

“Wha -?”

“I’m under a disillusionment spell,” came a deep, nearly uninflected voice from the seemingly empty hall. “I will drop it when I am inside.”

“Oh! Oh, of course, Professor!” George quickly marshaled his surprise into a smile of welcome. “Please, come in!”

Remus felt a momentary small movement in the air, and George shut the door. There was a soft “ _Finite Incantatum_ ”, then the black-robed back of Severus Snape materialized before them. He opened his mouth to say that it was good to see him again, when the former Headmaster of Hogwarts turned to face them and the bottom dropped out of his stomach.

The man was the closest thing to a walking corpse Remus had ever seen that wasn’t an actual inferius. The ashen pallor, near skeletal thinness, and - worst of all - the flat, dead eyes, left him torn between weeping and retching. St. Mungo’s had actually discharged him like this? George’s sharp intake of breath startled him, and he looked at the other man, and saw reflected in his face the same anger and pity.

“I won’t take up much of your time,” said Snape softly, not looking at either of them directly. “I’ve brought back your contract. You won’t be needing it.”

“If the terms are not acceptable, I’d be happy to - ,” George began to blurt in his shock.

“You misunderstand me, Mr. Weasley,” came the quiet interruption. “The reason you won’t be needing it is because I have decided to assign the rights to this potion to you _gratis_.”

George’s jaw dropped. “Buh - but -.”

Snape carried on in that same soft, flat voice as if there had been no sound from George. “I’ve brought the formula, as well as a sample of the brew I had among my stores. I’ve also brought with me my modified Wolfsbane, several other potions you might find useful, their formulae, and my assignment of these and any others you discover among my notes which interest you. I am sure you will be able to find a competent brewer.” With that, he drew a small case and a sheaf of parchments bound in a red ribbon from the pockets of his robes and placed them in George’s hands. His friend’s hands closed around them automatically, but he looked as if he’d been Stupified.

“But . . . why?”

Snape stepped by them and put his hand on the door knob, then turned his face back over his shoulder, eyes cast down.

“I’ve decided to go away - for awhile. I won’t be needing these any longer. Good evening to you both. I am sorry for your brother’s loss, Mr. Weasley, and your wife’s, Lupin.”

An icy hand gripped Remus’s heart. On no account would the proud potions master he’d known willingly hand over his life’s work without recompense and walk away. He knew exactly what the man meant to do.

“Oh, Severus - _no_!” he breathed, pleading with the man to reconsider, feeling his heart begin to break. After all they’d been through, it couldn’t come down to this.

Snape lifted those empty black eyes to his face, and then lowered them again and shrugged. “There’s no reason for me to stay.”

“The _hell_ there isn’t!”

All heads swiveled to face an enraged looking Harry Potter, who was surrounded by the remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix, all of the Weasley family and all the Heads of House at Hogwarts. Remus had forgotten that the lot of them had been waiting in the kitchen, having invited themselves to dinner when George had told them that Severus might come. They’d obviously overheard the conversation and reached the same conclusion he had. The company stood staring at Snape in varied states of horror and sorrow.

The man at the door stood impassive as a post, but the hand on the knob clenched and unclenched reflexively.

“This is not any of your concern.”

The tone held the same soft indifference as before, and Remus wanted to scream at him, hex him, anything to shake him out of this defeated apathy. The change in Snape’s demeanor was more frightening than any past behavior he’d ever witnessed. What had happened to reduce such a strong, passionate _terror_ of a wizard to this? Harry strode across the room, anger blazing in his face.

“It is if you intend to take the coward’s way out, Snape.”

Everyone froze. Something flickered in Severus’s eyes, but the typhoon of wrath which should have been the result of that hated epithet being flung at him by Harry never came. Instead, Snape closed his eyes wearily and turned back toward the door. The door was half open when Harry spoke again in a whisper.

“Severus . . . please.”

Remus counted three heartbeats before the door shut with a bang and Snape whirled to face Harry, a tower of incandescent rage.

“You _dare_ \- ,” but he never finished.

Remus watched with sorrowful compassion as Severus’s facade crumbled with the sudden surge of emotion. The man sank to his knees and looked up at Harry Potter with eyes which no longer bothered to conceal their pain.

“I can’t live with this any more. I beg of you - don’t require it of me.”

“ _Require_ it of you?” asked Harry, horrified, on his own knees before his former professor before he finished speaking. “I would _never_ \- !”

George laid a tentative hand on Snape’s shoulder as understanding dawned. “You were settling accounts, weren’t you, giving those potions to me,” he said gently. “You didn’t have to.”

“There was little else I had to give,” said Severus in a voice so small and broken that it hurt Remus to listen to it.  Leaving his hand where it lay, George crouched down to look into Severus’s red-rimmed eyes.

“The sacrifice of that ear saved Remus’s life. I know it wasn’t on purpose, Professor, but even if it had been, I don’t begrudge the cost.” Severus searched George’s face for a moment, but then dropped his head in his hands.

“I failed. The last task the Headmaster gave to me, I could not do. Time ran out and I failed at the only thing which kept me from flinging myself from the Astronomy Tower after him. I longed for death, for respite from the misery in which my life has been eternally steeped, hoping only to see the Dark Lord proceed me into oblivion. I couldn’t even manage that,” he said, his voice thick with misery. “Damn Dumbledore and that bird of his to the seventh level of Hell!”

Hermione had told him how she, Ron and Harry had gone back to retrieve Severus’s body, only to find Fawkes stretched out over him, crying into his gouged throat, as he hung onto life by a thread.

“No, you didn’t, sir.” Harry gently pulled Severus’s hands away from his face. Severus put up no resistance, but neither did he look up or acknowledge that he’d been spoken to, as Harry laid a bottle filled with a shining silver opalescent liquid into his palm and firmly closed his fingers around it. “You did not fail. You gave me everything I needed to do what had to be done, and then some. I would never have made it without you, Professor Snape. Thank you. Thank you for protecting me and helping me. Thank you for protecting the school and my friends and the entire wizarding world as best you could. It’s not your fault Dumbledore made it as hard for you as he did.” Severus lifted his head at that, looking at Harry in disbelief. “If it’s any consolation,” Harry continued with a wry smile, “he didn’t give me much help either, and I think I spent as much time cursing him in my head as you did, but with less reason.” He gave the thin, wraith-like hands a final squeeze and withdrew his own. “I, for one, am glad you’re still here with us, and I’m hoping you’ll decide to stay.”

There was a murmur of assent around the room. Harry rose, but Severus remained kneeling on the floor of George’s sitting room. The look on his face was one Remus hadn’t seen there since boyhood and the end of his friendship with Lily: he looked lost. __

_He doesn’t believe it_ , thought Remus, with rising panic. _Everyone in our world owes this man a life debt, yet, he doesn’t believe his life was worth anything, or that he has any value to anyone in this room. He’s going to get up, thank everyone for their concern, make them believe they’ve convinced him, and then he’ll walk out that door and end it anyway._

He tried to still his frantic thoughts, trying to see a way to help Severus understand the depth of their gratitude, and the regard his was held in, to stop him from sinking under the weight of his agony. _Merlin give me guidance_ , he begged. As soon as that thought passed through his brain, - _Merlin!_ \- he knew just what to do.

Slowly and deliberately, he went down on one knee before the unmoving wizard, and thought of all Severus had been to him: near friend, adolescent enemy, colleague, healer, and lover for a short time until Sirius drove them apart again, trusted ally, despised traitor, redeemed hero. The man had been under his skin since he’d been eleven years old, and he knew now that he always would be. Removing his wand from the sleeve of his robe, he laid it down, the handle facing Severus’s dominant hand.

“In gratitude and affection, Severus, from my hand to yours - where you go, I shall follow. _‘M lath ydy eiddo at archa._ ”

As he spoke the spell, his wand was bathed in a bright white glow. He now would no longer be able to touch it until Severus accepted his service by picking it up and handing it back to him. Astonishment rippled through the witches and wizards behind him, but he didn’t take his eyes from Severus.

“Remus, no -, I -, you cannot be serious!” He couldn’t have looked any more shocked than if Remus had slapped him.

“It is done, Severus,” he replied with a smile.

The moment he answered, Minerva was beside him, kneeling and laying her wand toward the gobsmacked Snape, repeating the ritual and the spell, and as her wand glowed white, tears spilled down her cheeks.

“Can you ever forgive me for being so wretchedly blind?”

“There is nothing to forgive, Minerva,” Severus replied thickly, still wearing that stricken look. “ _Horace?!_ ”

“Come back home, Headmaster. Your Slytherins need you. The school needs you.” And Slughorn’s glowing wand joined his and Minerva’s.

Flitwick’s and Sprout’s were added immediately after. Kingsley Shacklebolt’s wand found its place next to Pomona Sprout’s, in spite of Severus’s gasped, “Think what you are doing, Shacklebolt, - you are Minister now!”

“I have no worries. You are an honorable man.”

Severus hung onto his composure at that, but just barely. Remus had never been so proud, as one after another their friends and colleagues and students knelt and intoned the ritual as old as the wizarding world itself, the one invoked by every warrior-mage since Merlin himself put his wand in the service of Uther Pendragon, to proclaim fealty to one’s Prince. Everyone in the room had just pledged their honor, their fortunes, their very lives to defend this man who, twenty minutes before, had believed himself to be worthless. When all was said and done, over two dozen wands lay glowing on the floor before an openly weeping Severus Snape. It was a beautiful sight.

A slender hand, shaking with emotion, picked up each wand in the reverse of the order in which it was laid and handed it back to its owner, speaking to each the ancient closure of the ritual in his dark chocolate voice: “I accept your service with gratitude and extend to you my loyalty in turn. Rise. _Enwa 'ch chyfaill chan 'r deyrnas_.” The glow flared and seemed to linger for a moment or two before leaving only its memory in Severus’s eyes.

When his own wand was laid back in his hand, and he rose, Remus lifted Severus with him and embraced him, drawing his head down to place a kiss on his brow. “You are worthy of this,” he said fervently. “Never doubt it.”

Severus shook his head, then took a tremulous breath to regain some semblance of control. “I am grateful, Remus.”

“It was the least I could do,” he smiled. Severus shook his head again and muttered something that sounded like ‘demented’. Remus merely grinned at him and squeezed his arms. Beside them George’s stomach rumbled.

“I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m hoping our liege lord’s first command is to eat, because I’m starved.”

The Prince of the Realm went stiff in his arms as the others chuckled. “Oh,” he said, “I didn’t realize I was delaying your meal.”

“Our meal,” said Molly, emerging from the crowd to draw a reluctant Severus toward the kitchen. She looked up with a plea written on her face, “I made chicken pie. The need for distance is gone now, Severus. Please stay.”

“And afterward, you can hold court,” said George with a grin. “You have a number of petitioners who’ve been waiting to see you, and we’ve some unfinished business of our own.” He patted his pockets as he sat at the table.

“You’ll still need to find another brewer,” Minerva put in firmly. “The Headmaster’s going to be far too busy in the near future to be hovering over cauldrons for the likes of you.”

“Minerva, I don’t think - ,” Severus began, but she cut him off.

“The Board has been waiting to hear that you’ll be resuming your post, as you would know if you’d been accepting your mail.” She slipped an arm through his and began walking him to the chair next to hers. Remus felt Severus’s hand clasp his and tug him to the chair on his other side. He did not let go when he sat down. “Severus, we need you. I need you. Besides, the chair at the Headmaster’s desk won’t let anyone else sit in it for more than three minutes at a time before it chucks them out on their arses. The castle misses you, too.”

After the laughter died down, silence settled around the table. Remus watched as Severus, still so raw and overwhelmed, swept his eyes over the assembled crowd, then suddenly developed an intense interest in his serving of pie. Then he lifted his glass and cleared his throat.

“In remembrance of those we’ve lost.”

A chorus of soft ‘hear, hears’ followed and everybody drank.

“All hail our Prince! Long may he reign!”

Severus’s head snapped up in time to see a red-headed ghost come up through the table in front of him.

“Fred Weasley! Get your head out of the butter! You know it gets too hard to spread when you do that. Go hover over the salad instead.”

“Sorry, Mum,” said Fred looking sheepish. Then he grinned at the man before him. “Welcome back, Professor. If you ever need any help handling Peeves, I’d be delighted to do my bit!”

“Thank you, Mr. Weasley. I’ll keep that in mind. Shall we eat?”

Remus squeezed Severus’s hand, then let it go so he could pick up his fork. “Without delay.”

Everyone tucked in, including Severus, though he ate slowly and did not join in with any of the dozen conversations going on around him.

“Something wrong?” he asked softly. The man shook his head, though his shoulders slumped.

“I’m just so tired, Remus. I don’t know if I have the strength to be Headmaster again. As wonderful as this is, the world at large has a vastly different opinion of me. Dealing with that feels beyond my ability.”

“First of all, you’re still ill, and if I meet up with the mediwizard who let you out in this condition . . . . Ah, you’re glaring at me. There’s the Severus I know and love!”

“ Very funny, Lupin. I insisted on being released. I couldn’t take being in there another day. It was only a matter of time before one of them poisoned me,” his voice dropped low and he averted his gaze, “and I preferred to be the one doing that. At least then I could ensure it would be painless.”

Sadness swept through him again, and he reached under the table for the hand in Severus’s lap, and threaded his fingers through it.

“That’s over now. And you will get better; it will just take a little time. As for the rest of it, you’re the strongest man I know, but now you have a whole army to lean on when things get rough. Add our strength to yours, and there’s nothing you can’t overcome.”

Kingsley leaned across the table and added, “And there’s no chance the Ministry will deem this a conspiracy against it, considering that the Minister is one of the pledged, eh? Whatever you need, Severus, - you just have to ask.”

“When I think of how alone you were through all of this -,” interjected Minerva, remorse etching her handsome face, “well, I just want to say that Filius, Horace, Pomona and I - , we’ll remember. And you’ll never have to stand alone again.”

Severus’s fingers tightened around his own, and that overwhelmed expression had returned.

“I find that I am rather tired,” he said quietly. “Would anyone mind terribly if we postponed further business until another time?”

A chorus of “Of course nots,” “enjoy your rests,” and “we’ll see you again soons” rang out across the table. Severus released his hand, said his ‘good nights’ and stood.

“Would you object to accompanying me, Remus?” he asked.

“Not at all. Where would you like to go?”

A look of almost painful yearning crossed that sharp-featured face.

“Hogwarts,” he said softly.

“Come on then, let’s get you home.”

George dropped his wards, then the two wizards turned and disapparated, leaving behind a room full of smiling faces.

 

~~ fin ~~

_  
_

_‘M lath ydy eiddo at archa_ \- my wand is yours to command

_Enwa 'ch chyfaill chan 'r deyrnas_ \- I name you friend of the realm


End file.
